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Published: February 19th 2008
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Hello again to everyone in the UK!
Well I finally made it out of the cold to sticky Singapore. Despite leaving an hour behind schedule, a 200mph tail wind made up the time and I arrived at 8am Singapore time on Feb 15th.
The first day and a half was generally finding the hostel (easy on the MRT (Subway) System) and having a look around the local "Bugis" area. I ventured out a little bit later that evening to watch Asia's supposedly greatest parade - part of the Chingay Festival. It was pretty cool and provided enough entertainment to keep me happy.
Chris and Liam flew over from Mumbai on Feb 16th, so I met them at the airport just as they came through from baggage reclaim - I had planned on getting there earlier but having gone for a 20min jog that afternoon that took me twice round Singapore and lasted over an hour time was tighter than planned.
We dropped our bags off at the hostel and headed out for some dinner and a beer. It did soon become apparent though that you do not always end up where you intended to. With 4 or
Karaoke Bar at 6am
Chris, Zak, Ethan, Ben, Liam 5 lanes of traffic on all roads and heavy jay-walking fines, our destinations were generally governed by a green man at a crossing (rather than risk our lives and our currency with a dash across Rocher Road or Raffles Boulevard).
We did soon find a typical Singaporean food court, however, and tucked into chicken, pork and noodles using chopsticks as if we'd grown up in the heart of the Sze Chuan. Ok, so we soon resorted to knives and forks, but it felt good for a while and may turn out to be useful practice for when we head into China. Later, we found a nearby bar to watch the football in and sampled the local delicacy - Tiger Beer! We had soon absorbed enough of the culture to ask a table of young locals nearby what the strange hand game they were playing was. It turned out to be their equivalent of Paper-Scissors-Stone. We ended up playing it with them for an hour or so for beer, we were drinking their beer and they were drinking ours. We were going to head home at about 2am ish when they invited us to stay out with them, and they
took us to their local Karaoke bar! We had a few more drinks there and they then bought a bottle of Cognac and played drinking games with cards and we ended up drinking the whole bottle. The wierd thing is they weren't pouring it with a normal mixer, we were drinking it with GREEN TEA!!!
After a quick burst of Bryan Adams' classic "Summer of '69" (they didn't have "I'm (just about) still standing") we left them at 6am and headed back to the hostel, only getting up at 2pm that day (6am UK time), so that did nothing to help us get into the local time. They wouldn't take a penny for our drinks either - they were so friendly it was just really cool!
When we did eventually make it out of our bunks the next day (not easy with air-conditioned rooms and a 30-degree humid heat outside), we headed off to the Zoo and the famous Night Safari. It's an amazing zoo in natural tropical rainforest, with very few fences, just moats separating you from many of the world's scariest animals. We hung around for dinner and then headed out around the night Safari trails.
Despite seeing Tigers, Crocs, Bears and Lions, we escaped with just a couple of mozzy bites.
Yesterday we went to Sentosa Island just off the south coast of mainland Singapore and did everything they had to offer, including a 4D cinema ride, Sky Tower view of the islands and city, Cable Cars, Downhill Luge and even a dip in the Sea. There's too much to describe, but hopefully you'll get the idea of the kind of friendly, clean and fun place it was from the photos.
We followed up the Island trip with Singapore's most famous attraction - Raffles, where we savoured (well, not quite - they're too tasty!) Gin SLing. The are sooooooooo nice! A bit pricey at S$23 (say 8quid) but worth it. We followed it with a S$15 beer and moved on. It was really cool there with a live band and old colonial style. We agreed it was definitely the kind of lifestyle we could all get used to!
We're heading out of Singapore tonight on the 9-hour Sleeper train to Kuala Lumpur (KL), so are signing off from Singapore, but have seen all the main sights and thoroughly enjoyed this clean, multi-cultural
country.
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Little Oakes
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Graffiti out of my office window
Benny and friends, Hi! Just read the first blog instalment titled land of the little green men. I'm so jealous having just looked out of my grey office window (for the 10th time this morning) with only the graffiti of 'suck it' making it through the London smog. I sit here as a little enviously-green lady! All sounds fantastic so far, I very much enjoyed the pics and look forward to seeing more. Well I hope you have a great time, if you get fed up think of my journey to work this morning; it was 7.15am, I had a ropy stomach and after being so rammed on the train I ended up inhaling someone's dreadlock, I got off at Victoria for the man in front of me to vomit all over the train exit. I stepped over it and cracked on with my freezing cold walk to the office only to find a broken lift so I had to hoof it up 8 flights of stairs. All before 8am. Love it! Hope you all feel very smug. :)